Aare Ona Kakanfo of Yorubaland, Chief Gani Adams has explained how the Nigeria Immigration Service, NIS, has refused to issue him diplomatic passport.
Adams, in a recent interview, said that the Yorubas have been caged.
But he added that “It is only someone who is ready for liberation that you can liberate. You can take a horse to the stream but you cannot force it to drink water. If you make any move beyond those two letters without their cooperation, they will set you up. Some of the governors would call Abuja and say arrest him, who gave him the power? What is he talking about as Aare Ona Kakanfo?”
According to him, “Do you know I went for my blue passport, and they refused me? And when Abiola was alive he was using diplomatic passport. They refused me my blue passport at Immigration Office after I met all the criteria. The Ondo State Secretary to the Government wrote a letter of recommendation, that was one of the criteria and the chieftaincy letter given to me. I gave them at the Immigration Office; they still refused because of political sentiment. But some of the Serikis of the Fulanis have blue passports. I was in South Africa, even the Nigerian mission there was not happy as they asked: Aare where is your blue passport?”
Asked if he called anybody to intervene on his behalf, Adams noted that “I don’t approach things like that. I would allow you exhaust your options. At the normal time I would approach it. Look, what is supposed to be yours would come to you, it’s your right. But they refused me blue passport which is junior to official passport, I have kept quiet. There is a lot of injustice on ground. I am not a person that would be shouting over a denial of blue passport. If you are holding it, it does not mean an automatic visa in some embassies. It is an honour; it can just reduce days of processing your documents at embassies.”
He also spoke on how he felt when the governors and traditional rulers did not respond to the security summit.
“I have been in this game for long and I know how some of our governors think. Their political interest always supersedes any other interest. I wouldn’t deceive you; the Yoruba nation has been caged. We have been caged.
“I wouldn’t tell you by whom but we have been caged. This is not the Yoruba we met when we started the struggle in 1993. The respect other tribes had for us could not be quantified. Most of the great politicians and activists of the Niger Delta, even in the North, passed through the school of thought as freedom fighters in Lagos and Ibadan but unfortunately, certain politicians have infiltrated many Yoruba organisations, socio-cultural organisations. The worst part of it, the civil societies and NGOs have been infiltrated to the extent that they have minimal approach to the interest of Yoruba.
“Even among the religious leaders now, we have a limited number of radicals unlike in the past. Then, we had people like Cardinal Olubunmi Okogie, Baba Adetiloye, and other radical clerics. Now they have reduced in number. Hardly would you see any governor talking about restructuring in Yoruba land. What majority are after is how to win election in 2019.
“We are losing serious coordination in politics; the governors have the mindset that they are the ones that can do it alone and at the end of the day, they have different interests. In any issue involving politics, every stakeholder must sit down, even though you wouldn’t take all the advice, but you take their input. So that when elections come, you would set a direction, at the end of the day, people can vote for candidates of their choice. So we are not well coordinated unlike when we had a leader like Chief Obafemi Awolowo, that a political meeting would be held and a decision taken in Ikenne on the way to go. Even when Baba Adekunle Ajasin was alive something similar would happen, the meeting in Owo then went beyond Afenifere where they would take decisions on Yoruba. By then the North and other parts of the country respected us. Even when Baba Adesanya was around too, there was fear of the Yoruba people. There was a rallying point, now the money bag is just throwing punches at any reliable organisation. That’s a fundamental problem we have.
There is no unity yet among our obas. I am one of the people that are suggesting that we have to revive the Yoruba Council of Obas. When there is economic attachment, unity will come. The only thing they would do is that there would be a constitution to give them the boundaries of the meetings. Our intellectuals would map out areas they can operate, they would fashion out a mission statement on what they can discuss about the way forward, about the Yoruba nation. The issue of insecurities can be tackled within the council of obas,” he added.
